infoTECH Feature

DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe) recently announced that it will use Infinera's DTN-X platform to infuse added scalability, simplicity, and efficiency into the pan-European GÉANT network. DANTE operates and manages the GÉANT network for Europe's national research and education networks (NRENs).

“Our selection of Infinera's DTN-X platform demonstrates to the European national research and education community that we've chosen an innovative technology leader, offering the best solution on the market today to meet our capacity, flexibility and service lead time requirements,” Michael Enrico, CTO at DANTE, said. “We are impressed by Infinera's PIC technology and the DTN-X platform – from significantly simplifying our operations and reducing the time to deploy bandwidth to fundamentally lowering our total cost of ownership – these were all factors that we considered against more conventional competitors."

The optical layer of the GÉANT network can transport huge amounts of data essential to experiments and applications which are important to academic research. Because some experiments use up massive amounts of bandwidth at must faster rates, the Bandwidth Virtualization component of the DTN-X which is based on integrated OTN switching and GMPLS will enable the GÉANT network to quickly deploy large amounts of optical bandwidth.

The Infinera DTN-X platform will support 500 Gb/s FlexCoherent super-channels for a number of routes on GÉANT's network which will effectively provide the network with increased scalability and also lower operational costs.

Tom Fallon, chief executive officer of Infinera, said, "Research and education networks such as GÉANT help accelerate the pace of important research and are leading indicators of how next-generation networks will be built. DANTE's selection of the DTN-X demonstrates the Infinera solution for multi-terabit optical networks is proving valuable to markets above and beyond traditional network operators."

The DTN-X platform can also be upgraded to deliver 1 Tb/s long-reach super-channels and MPLS switching based on future requirements. Another advantage delivered by the DTN-X platform is that its power and space consumption is low thanks to the unique 500 Gb/s photonic integrated circuits (PICs) included in the platform’s design.